Don't be blinded by the exceptions

April 7, 6:36 PMDenver Gun Rights ExaminerDan Bidstrup

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Years ago, I was in Washing on D.C. on vacation and a friend had asked me to meet with my senator, Alan Simpson of Wyoming.  Being from such a sparsely populated state, arranging such a meeting was easy, and when I met him, I pled the case of my friend, a pretty, blonde, blue eyed Finn who was an illegal immigrant.  As author of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 , or the Simpson-Mazzoli act, America's first run at controlling the flow of illegals into the US, I thought he might have a solution for me.  Rather than entering illegally, she had entered legally and overstayed her student visa and didn't fit under any of the categories granted amnesty by the act. He said his hands were tied, and any exceptional legislation he might create for her would be political suicide since he wrote the bill.  What he told me then has stuck with me to this day.

He said her case was very sad and unfair. She would be an outstanding American.  Stories like hers crossed his desk almost daily, of decent people who for some reason or another didn't fit the amnesty rules of the bill.  As a senator for the whole United States, he could not allow himself to legislate based on anecdote.  Every law had to be the best possible for the entire country.  Every issue had its heart-rending story of how the bill in question would negatively impact some group or another. He said it was hard not to be swayed by the exceptions and to keep his eye on the best solution for (at that time) 200 million Americans.

Gun legislation, by contrast, is swept by emotionalism.  Each time there is a mass killing like in Alabama or New York, cries go up to clamp down harder on guns.  "If we could save even one life by this legislation...." it is said. We must remove guns from the hands of murderers" we are told.  We need yet more "reasonable" gun laws   Right now, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are using the violence in Mexico to justify reinstating the "assault weapon" ban on scary semi-automatic rifles.  Our country is so large with over 300 million people now, that if we comb all the police files, we could find a terrible gun crime for every day of the week.  This is focusing on the exceptions, not the rule.  Let us resist scare tactics and anecdotal stories and focus on the big picture for laws that affect the whole country. Studying the history of crime statistics kept by the FBI show that the better armed law abiding citizens are, the lower the violent crime rate.  Note that New York has some of the tightest gun laws on the books and it didn't stop the Binghamton shooter.  If we keep Senator Simpson's advice in mind, we will save more lives by arming more regular citizens.